The key is to keep moving. Move in and out of melee range. Use your cc abilities like blind liberally. If you stop moving and try to go toe to toe with the mob, you'll die (unless you are a Guardian). The thief is the most mobile of all the professions but also the squishiest.

Every class seems about equal in performance and capability. Play it like a run-of-the-mill 3rd person action game. Guild Wars 2 is closer to games like Kingdoms of Amular, Darksiders or Demon Souls than World of Warcraft.

Much less under the hood dice rolling in GW2 than in new era MMOs [WoW] or true MMOs [Everquest].

It's an action game with RPG & platforming elements. Play it as such, move.

QUOTE=Doozerjun;19711693]The thief is the most mobile of all the professions but also the squishiest.[/QUOTE]

I'd say Ele would be the squishiest imo ;P

Last edited by Beats Per Minute; 2013-01-06 at 02:14 AM.

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For PvE i sugest you start of by playing with daggers. If you don't learn how to play with them early on (and struggle a bit) you'll never get it once you face "real" enemies. Try to "master" backstabs.

I personally lvl with just the shortbow and dual pistols though since sb is great for aoeing and pistols are awesome at bursting.

For the rest move and dodge, the moment you play static is the moment you do it wrong.

I've been very slowly levelling up a thief since release (only about 55 now) and I've found that Sword / Pistol is the most enjoyable playstyle. Shadow step in, pistol whip as much as your initiative allows and then either roll to regain initiative or shadow step back and switch to either Pistol / Pistol or, as I prefer, short bow to finish the mobs off if they are still clinging on to life. S/P does allow for some great AoE pulls with multiple mobs when you gain some higher level AoE abilities.

Being aware of your opponent's attacks is also pretty essential as you'll go squish otherwise.

I've been very slowly levelling up a thief since release (only about 55 now) and I've found that Sword / Pistol is the most enjoyable playstyle. Shadow step in, pistol whip as much as your initiative allows and then either roll to regain initiative or shadow step back and switch to either Pistol / Pistol or, as I prefer, short bow to finish the mobs off if they are still clinging on to life. S/P does allow for some great AoE pulls with multiple mobs when you gain some higher level AoE abilities.

Being aware of your opponent's attacks is also pretty essential as you'll go squish otherwise.

Add Leeching Venoms to that and you can pretty much just stand there. ^_^ Sword / Pistol: It's potentially the strongest set you can bring as a Venom build. It brings a strong evade that does quite a lot of damage, a gapcloser that immobilizes, interrupts, blind zones and auto attacks that can hit 3 targets per strike to spread your venoms.

- The Slice combo hits 3 targets/hit and now one hit only uses 1 venom stack, so you can get 3x leeching proc per strike.
- Infiltrator's Strike is the perfect way to get in and out of fights and immobilizes your target if your shadowstep-strike hits.
- Pistol Whip gives you the survivability you need to stay in fights thanks to its evade and deals quite a good ammount of damage, even without +crit and +crit damage. It's also an extremly good way to unload your Venoms during a teamfight if you can hit multiple targets with it.
- Headshot provides you with interrupts, which is always good.
- Black Powder creates blind zones (and a smoke combo field), which allows you to cover team-mates who are being focused, get easy stomps and smooth revives.

I played a thief until around level 51-52. I stopped playing it because certain skill challenges and the such were just to difficult. I really didn't understand the game, and this has been fixed quite a bit by rolling a ranger.

I didn't realize how pivotal weapon swapping was, and was building my thief without any survival whatsoever without thinking about it. The Ranger fixed these issues.It allowed me to realize how beneficial other stats can be. It also helped me realize how important evade is. I am now looking forward to going back to my thief and completing him, but honestly the ranger has stolen my heart. Level 80 in just under 2 weeks and currently working towards my legendary.

Sword and pistol you can actually toe to toe by keeping black powder up, but it's slow killing and not really that fun. I enjoy sword/dagger too. You can stealth and hit from behind to stun your target, or you can run around swinging and use your dagger to dump initiative points. Dancing dagger bounces between enemies and even though it was nerfed a little while ago, isn't too bad of damage. Plus sword and dagger looks cool. : P